McLean, VA (August 17, 2021) – The Center for Excellence in Education (CEE) is pleased to announce its Research Science Institute (RSI) top 5 award winners for oral and top 5 written presentations chosen from 81 participants by an eminent panel of judges at the 38th annual RSI held in a virtual format. The $1,000 scholarship awards were presented by Dr. Ross Grossman, retired SVP, Human Resources, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc., on behalf of Regeneron. Dr. Grossman is a CEE Trustee.
Awardees:
Top 5 Written Presentations:
Kevin Cong, Exeter, New Hampshire
Title: On the Sizes of Furstenberg Sets in Finite Fields
Mentor(s): Alexander Ortiz, MIT Math Department - Prof. David Jerison, Prof. Ankur Moitra, Tanya Khovanova, PhD
Amber Luo, Stony Brook, New York
A Wavelet Transform-Based Peak Detection Algorithm to Assess Ribosome Pause Sites in Ribosome Profiling Data
Mentor: Prof. Can Cenik (University of Texas at Austin)
Dheepthi Mohanraj, Chapel Hill, North Carolina
AutoFlow: A Novel Method for Assessing Minimal Residual Disease in Breast Cancer Patients by Identifying Bone Marrow Disseminated Tumor Cells through the Analysis of Flow Cytometry Data
Mentor: Prof. Lewis A. Chodosh (University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine)
Michelle Park, Solon, Ohio
The Search for Dark Matter Through Soft Unclustered Energy Patterns at CMS
Mentors: Prof. Christoph Paus and Dr. Chad Freer (MIT)
Ella Wang, Chandler, Arizona
Assessing light-induced fading of colored art objects via digital visualization techniques Mentors: Dr. Katherine Schilling, Dean Vincent Wilczynski (Yale University)
Top 5 Oral Presentations:
Meenakshi Ambati, Charlottesville, Virginia
Inferring Biological Tasks of Fibroblasts Using Pareto Archetype Analysis of Single-Cell RNA-Seq Data
Mentors: Prof. Ruslan Medzhitov (Yale School of Medicine) and Dr. Miri Adler (Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard)
Frank Liu, Newton, Massachusetts
PRESTO: Rapid protein mechanical strength prediction with an end-to-end deep learning model
Mentors: Prof. Markus J. Buehler and Dr. Bo Ni (MIT)
Donald “DJ” Liveoak, Allen Park, Michigan
Discrete Schrödinger Bridges
Mentor: Prof. Justin Solomon (MIT)
Amber Luo, Stony Brook, New York
A Wavelet Transform-Based Peak Detection Algorithm to Assess Ribosome Pause Sites in Ribosome Profiling Data
Mentor: Prof. Can Cenik (University of Texas at Austin)
Michelle Park, Solon, Ohio
The Search for Dark Matter Through Soft Unclustered Energy Patterns at CMS
Mentors: Prof. Christoph Paus and Dr. Chad Freer (MIT)
In addition, Isabella Quan, a student from Westlake High School, Austin, Texas, was chosen by her RSI peers for the top honor—Rickoid of the Year—at the Center for Excellence in Education’s (CEE) 38th annual Research Science Institute (RSI). The award recognizes academic acumen, leadership, and personal demeanor, and is named for the late Admiral H.G. Rickover, father of the nuclear Navy and a founder of CEE.
“These scholars are our future creators, inventors, scientists, and leaders of the 21st century, and their research represents a high level of academic acumen,” said Joann P. DiGennaro, CEE President. “RSI students experience graduate-level research and camaraderie with other academically talented STEM students.”
RSI is offered cost-free by CEE to competitively selected top achieving students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Students are selected by CEE’s committee of professional educators and RSI alumni based on high school records, personal essays, standardized test scores, teacher recommendations, research experience, potential for leadership, and honors and awards in math and science. To date, nearly 3,000 high school students - representing every U.S. state and more than 56 nations - have experienced RSI.
The 2021 RSI summer program (June 27 to Aug. 7), collaboratively sponsored with MIT, consisted of one week of theoretical classroom work, followed by four-and-a-half weeks of cutting-edge research under the mentorship of leading scientists, engineers, and researchers in the students’ respective areas of interest. In their final week, students demonstrate their research work through written academic papers and oral presentations to their peers and a panel of judges.
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About the Center for Excellence in Education
The Center for Excellence in Education (CEE) was founded in 1983 by the late Admiral H.G. Rickover and Joann P. DiGennaro, President of the Center. The Center’s mission is to nurture high school and university scholars to careers of excellence and leadership in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, and to encourage collaboration between and among scientific and technological leaders in the global community. CEE sponsors the Research Science Institute (RSI), the USA Biolympiad (USABO), and the Teacher Enrichment Program (TEP). For more information, visit CEE’s website, https://www.cee.org.
Media Contact:
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